My interests include cognitive science most broadly, language more specifically, and most specifically, language dynamics (processing, acquisition, emergence in communities, historical change, evolution in our species). I mostly investigate these dynamics in the lexicon and in prosody, largely using lab- and field-based experiments, corpus analysis, and computational modeling. I also maintain interests in experimental design, statistics, data science, computational linguistics/NLP, and the like.

My master’s thesis examined conventionalization of lexicons, using naturalistic data from Nicaraguan homesign systems and Nicaraguan Sign Language, and an agent-based computational model. You can find a video of me describing the work here (made for the 2013 IGERT Poster and Video competition).

For my dissertation, I am examining conventionalization and reduction of referring expressions, using experimental data from a charades-like task, and agent-based models extended from my master’s.